Desktop & "small" laptop, or "big" laptop?

[Kraschtest]

Good morning,
I need a laptop. The prices below are mentioned to support the comparison. I'm looking especially for more power (but obviously not less than in my current setup).

Since I love my Mac Pro 2013, I first thought to keep my Mac Pro 2013 and buy a basic Macbook Air without options:
A ) Macbook Air 2020: 1000 CHF
B ) Macbook Air 2017: 500/600 CHF (+ possible change of the SSD that might be only 128GB)... Quite cheap, but not the most attractive solution, I'd be happy to have something a bit more powerful and a retina display...

Then I've seen an auction for a Mac Pro 2013 comparable to mine: what about selling my Mac Pro and buy a stronger Macbook Pro (1TB/16GB) ?
My hardest tasks are not extraordinary demanding: encoding of long videos using Handbrake (processed in queues, a couple times a week). The Mac Pro 2013 6-core is certainly not the fastest for the job, but he does it honorably, fast enough for me, all cores fully loaded, not even "sweating" at 70°C, breathing deeply and quietly as an experienced marathon runner...

Thanks to the resale of the Mac Pro:
C ) Macbook pro 16": final cost about 1000 CHF (plus 100 for a few adapters?) Very comfortable, powerful, and I may even free my desk of my external monitor.
D ) Macbook pro 13": final cost about 400 CHF (plus 100 for a few adapters?) Cheapest solution, but with more risk of thermal inconvenience.

What do you think of these options?
And if you have the experience, would the heat and fan noise become a deal-breaker? (for options C or D)
Thanks for your opinions!

 

[Fishrrman]

Keep the Mac Pro, of course.
I'd get the MBP 13" for portability, and that would be that.

 

[iluvmacs99]

Good morning,
I need a laptop. The prices below are mentioned to support the comparison. I'm looking especially for more power (but obviously not less than in my current setup).

Since I love my Mac Pro 2013, I first thought to keep my Mac Pro 2013 and buy a basic Macbook Air without options:
A ) Macbook Air 2020: 1000 CHF
B ) Macbook Air 2017: 500/600 CHF (+ possible change of the SSD that might be only 128GB)... Quite cheap, but not the most attractive solution, I'd be happy to have something a bit more powerful and a retina display...

Then I've seen an auction for a Mac Pro 2013 comparable to mine: what about selling my Mac Pro and buy a stronger Macbook Pro (1TB/16GB) ?
My hardest tasks are not extraordinary demanding: encoding of long videos using Handbrake (processed in queues, a couple times a week). The Mac Pro 2013 6-core is certainly not the fastest for the job, but he does it honorably, fast enough for me, all cores fully loaded, not even "sweating" at 70°C, breathing deeply and quietly as an experienced marathon runner...

Thanks to the resale of the Mac Pro:
C ) Macbook pro 16": final cost about 1000 CHF (plus 100 for a few adapters?) Very comfortable, powerful, and I may even free my desk of my external monitor.
D ) Macbook pro 13": final cost about 400 CHF (plus 100 for a few adapters?) Cheapest solution, but with more risk of thermal inconvenience.

What do you think of these options?
And if you have the experience, would the heat and fan noise become a deal-breaker? (for options C or D)
Thanks for your opinions!

If you are encoding long videos using Handbrake presumably into h.264/h.265 and you want to beat a Mac Pro, then you need to get a Mac with Quicksync and T2. The Xeon processors on the Mac Pro does not have Quicksync. I have a Mac Pro 5,1 myself and while it beats everything my Macbook Air 2014 can do, my MB Air smokes the Mac Pro when I encode videos to h.264 using Quicksync. It is 4x faster, because Quicksync is a hardware encoder/decoder so it is efficient in doing this. The new Apple T2 chip enhances the encoding speed further up to 10x faster than what your Mac Pro could do with only the Xeon processors. The fan and heat will rise when you are using the Macbook to encode long videos, then it is wise just to get a really nice gaming style laptop cooling fan to mitigate the heat issues. Both Pros just mentioned are known to have heat issues as they are laptops, not desktop like your Mac Pro. Still, your Mac Pro is very inefficient in encoding long videos because it does not have Quicksync and T2 which the Macbook Pro 16" has. Just Quicksync alone still is fine. What I do with my Mac Pro is create the videos and then send it to MB Air to do the final encoding via Quicksync.

 

[Kraschtest]

Hi, thanks for your feedbacks!
I gathered a few other pieces of advice, and I decided to get a MacBook Air. I even slightly upgraded it for more flexibility for daily use, travels...
I'm convinced that I'm not saving time, encoding with the Mac Pro. However, it is so quiet... that I don't really mind waiting 20min more to get my videos. After all, my target was to determine the best consensus to get 1) portability, and 2) equivalent (or more) power. Having two machines seemed to be the best way to achieve that.